It's interesting. Judges tend to show more leniency for defendents who show remorse. But corporations by their nature are remorseless. Accountability has no place in the bottom line.

And yes, a self-sustaining world where people network and the strong help the weak sounds lovely. I read an interesting book, Cradle to Cradle written by an engineer and an architect. They showed how we can create a self-sustaining world and shape our lifestyles to fit the environment instead of the other way around.

communitarian. I do agree with your vision of a world that is self sustaining. I really would like to live in a world like that.

It's not my organization to begin with. This isn't any organization with any agenda other than keeping records of many things in the public sphere. That is their agenda - to spread awareness. All I was reprinting was the history of the debate and laws passed concerning corporations and how we have arrived at where we are today. I'm only advocating that people read the very true origins of corporations and how, over the years, the original ideas to keep corporations in check have been undermined and now corporations can do almost any harm without the threat of any real punishment.
I do know that I copied the text poorly by duplicating many parts. But once again, I am only presenting the history of the debate over how to control huge corporations. At the time of some of these laws being enacted, the actions of the East India Trade company had many of the framers of our constitution concerned about any corpoation gaining too much power.
What do you find so offensive in these old laws? Corporate charters (licenses to exist) were granted for a limited time and could be revoked promptly for violating laws.
* Corporations could engage only in activities necessary to fulfill their chartered purpose.
* Corporations could not own stock in other corporations nor own any property that was not essential to fulfilling their chartered purpose.
* Corporations were often terminated if they exceeded their authority or caused public harm.
* Owners and managers were responsible for criminal acts committed on the job.
* Corporations could not make any political or charitable contributions nor spend money to influence law-making.
To me they make plenty of sense. These were also once laws passed by congress, not the imaginings of some group advocating any form of government. It was our government that originally put these laws on the books.
If you don't agree, then I imagine that incidents like Bhopal in India are not to be punished, it's just the tough luck for the people living there. Or maybe destroying rainforest to produce chicken feed (And also violating the laws of the country Cargill was working in)are good things to do. Or how about leakage from containers holding gasoline seeping out and into the goundwater should be ignored. Or price manipulation of energy costs by Enron is OK.
What sort of government are you suggesting?

I also want to say degrees do not impress me. It is clear thinking, integrity and mature attitudes that impress me. A formal education can be helpful, but it doesn't always work, and there are self educated people whose minds are as informed and disciplined as any university postgraduate.

hybridoma and eurobelle, I just want to thank you both for standing up for me when I was personally attacked for expressing my viewpoint.

PDFee, I do not abandon my personal standards of behavior when confronted by someone who is behaving inappropriately. What gets accomplished when everyone starts behaving like children out of control?

I'll always participate in spirited, intelligent conversations where I find them. I can't say that my viewpoints will be coincident with anyone else's, but I will always listen to what others have to say and will encourage, not discourage, the free-flow of ideas.

I will heed the advice to maintain a respectful tongue, but be aware that I do respond in kind. Suffice it to say that I am not a "failue", I can only assume that the author meant "failure" by any stretch of the imagination. Both M.S. and M.A. graduate degrees have given me perspective and exposed me to a vast amount of book knowledge, but it is the experience of a lifetime of work and achievement that have helped solidify my view of the world. I am also open to new ideas, so I do choose to read and absorb a wide variety of thought. Some of which I agree with, other of which I don't.

Hybridoma,

What kind of democracy does your organization wish to reclaim - local sovereignty or bureaucratic authority?

I favor continental networks of eco-tech villages that surround themselves with miles of healthy wilderness, recycle 100% of their industrial and human waste, using whatever technology is helpful, and trading freely with each other. For this to happen, we humans must reduce our numbers by giving all women the right to decide if and when to birth how many or few children. Then, we could all live in peace and balance with the Earth, our healthy biosphere. If not, ecocide and self-extinction will be our fate.

The following is a history of corporations, completed by the Program for Corporations, Law, and Democracy.
When American colonists declared independence from England in 1776, they also freed themselves from control by English corporations that extracted their wealth and dominated trade. After fighting a revolution to end this exploitation, our country's founders retained a healthy fear of corporate power and wisely limited corporations exclusively to a business role. Corporations were forbidden from attempting to influence elections, public policy, and other realms of civic society.
Initially, the privilege of incorporation was granted selectively to enable activities that benefited the public, such as construction of roads or canals. Enabling shareholders to profit was seen as a means to that end.
The states also imposed conditions (some of which remain on the books, though unused) like these:
* Corporate charters (licenses to exist) were granted for a limited time and could be revoked promptly for violating laws.
* Corporations could engage only in activities necessary to fulfill their chartered purpose.
* Corporations could not own stock in other corporations nor own any property that was not essential to fulfilling their chartered purpose.
* Corporations were often terminated if they exceeded their authority or caused public harm.
* Owners and managers were responsible for criminal acts committed on the job.
When American colonists declared independence from England in 1776, they also freed themselves from control by English corporations that extracted their wealth and dominated trade. After fighting a revolution to end this exploitation, our country's founders retained a healthy fear of corporate power and wisely limited corporations exclusively to a business role. Corporations were forbidden from attempting to influence elections, public policy, and other realms of civic society.
Initially, the privilege of incorporation was granted selectively to enable activities that benefited the public, such as construction of roads or canals. Enabling shareholders to profit was seen as a means to that end.
The states also imposed conditions (some of which remain on the books, though unused) like these:
* Corporate charters (licenses to exist) were granted for a limited time and could be revoked promptly for violating laws.
* Corporations could engage only in activities necessary to fulfill their chartered purpose.
* Corporations could not own stock in other corporations nor own any property that was not essential to fulfilling their chartered purpose.
* Corporations were often terminated if they exceeded their authority or caused public harm.
* Owners and managers were responsible for criminal acts committed on the job.
When American colonists declared independence from England in 1776, they also freed themselves from control by English corporations that extracted their wealth and dominated trade. After fighting a revolution to end this exploitation, our country's founders retained a healthy fear of corporate power and wisely limited corporations exclusively to a business role. Corporations were forbidden from attempting to influence elections, public policy, and other realms of civic society.
Initially, the privilege of incorporation was granted selectively to enable activities that benefited the public, such as construction of roads or canals. Enabling shareholders to profit was seen as a means to that end.
The states also imposed conditions (some of which remain on the books, though unused) like these:
* Corporate charters (licenses to exist) were granted for a limited time and could be revoked promptly for violating laws.
* Corporations could engage only in activities necessary to fulfill their chartered purpose.
* Corporations could not own stock in other corporations nor own any property that was not essential to fulfilling their chartered purpose.
* Corporations were often terminated if they exceeded their authority or caused public harm.
* Owners and managers were responsible for criminal acts committed on the job.
* Corporations could not make any political or charitable contributions nor spend money to influence law-making.
For 100 years after the American Revolution, legislators maintained tight control of the corporate chartering process. Because of widespread public opposition, early legislators granted very few corporate charters, and only after debate. Citizens governed corporations by detailing operating conditions not just in charters but also in state constitutions and state laws. Incorporated businesses were prohibited from taking any action that legislators did not specifically allow.
States also limited corporate charters to a set number of years. Unless a legislature renewed an expiring charter, the corporation was dissolved and its assets were divided among shareholders. Citizen authority clauses limited capitalization, debts, land holdings, and sometimes, even profits. They required a company's accounting books to be turned over to a legislature upon request. The power of large shareholders was limited by scaled voting, so that large and small investors had equal voting rights. Interlocking directorates were outlawed. Shareholders had the right to remove directors at will.
In Europe, charters protected directors and stockholders from liability for debts and harms caused by their corporations. American legislators explicitly rejected this corporate shield. The penalty for abuse or misuse of the charter was not a plea bargain and a fine, but dissolution of the corporation.
In 1819 the U.S. Supreme Court tried to strip states of this sovereign right by overruling a lower court's decision that allowed New Hampshire to revoke a charter granted to Dartmouth College by King George III. The Court claimed that since the charter contained no revocation clause, it could not be withdrawn. The Supreme Court's attack on state sovereignty outraged citizens. Laws were written or re-written and new state constitutional amendments passed to circumvent the Dartmouth ruling. Over several decades starting in 1844, nineteen states amended their constitutions to make corporate charters subject to alteration or revocation by their legislatures. As late as 1855 it seemed that the Supreme Court had gotten the people's message when in Dodge v. Woolsey it reaffirmed state's powers over "artificial bodies."
But the men running corporations pressed on. Contests over charter were battles to control labor, resources, community rights, and political sovereignty. More and more frequently, corporations were abusing their charters to become conglomerates and trusts. They converted the nation's resources and treasures into private fortunes, creating factory systems and company towns. Political power began flowing to absentee owners, rather than community-rooted enterprises.
The industrial age forced a nation of farmers to become wage earners, and they became fearful of unemployment--a new fear that corporations quickly learned to exploit. Company towns arose. and blacklists of labor organizers and workers who spoke up for their rights became common. When workers began to organize, industrialists and bankers hired private armies to keep them in line. They bought newspapers to paint businessmen as heroes and shape public opinion. Corporations bought state legislators, then announced legislators were corrupt and said that they used too much of the public's resources to scrutinize every charter application and corporate operation.
Government spending during the Civil War brought these corporations fantastic wealth. Corporate executives paid "borers" to infest Congress and state capitals, bribing elected and appointed officials alike. They pried loose an avalanche of government financial largesse. During this time, legislators were persuaded to give corporations limited liability, decreased citizen authority over them, and extended durations of charters. Attempts were made to keep strong charter laws in place, but with the courts applying legal doctrines that made protection of corporations and corporate property the center of constitutional law, citizen sovereignty was undermined. As corporations grew stronger, government and the courts became easier prey. They freely reinterpreted the U.S. Constitution and transformed common law doctrines.
One of the most severe blows to citizen authority arose out of the 1886 Supreme Court case of Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad. Though the court did not make a ruling on the question of "corporate personhood," thanks to misleading notes of a clerk, the decision subsequently was used as precedent to hold that a corporation was a "natural person."
From that point on, the 14th Amendment, enacted to protect rights of freed slaves, was used routinely to grant corporations constitutional "personhood." Justices have since struck down hundreds of local, state and federal laws enacted to protect people from corporate harm based on this illegitimate premise. Armed with these "rights," corporations increased control over resources, jobs, commerce, politicians, even judges and the law.
A United States Congressional committee concluded in 1941, "The principal instrument of the concentration of economic power and wealth has been the corporate charter with unlimited power...."
Many U.S.-based corporations are now transnational, but the corrupted charter remains the legal basis for their existence. At ReclaimDemocracy.org, we believe citizens can reassert the convictions of our nation's founders who struggled successfully to free us from corporate rule in the past. These changes must occur at the most fundamental level -- the U.S. Constitution.

I've seen the corporation and it is indeed a very good film. I wish films like this were mandatory, but that would be cutting in on a person's right to choose. But again, yes, The Corporation is well worth seeing.

I wasn't talking about a climate-based revolution. I was talking about a "perfect storm" of events coinciding - or perhaps colliding is a more accurate term for what is coming.

PDFee, personal attacks on people you do not agree with is unconstructive. Perhaps that is just characteristic of people of your political persuasion, since we see many examples of people who apparently haven't been taught good manners, but in general, on this website, people treat each other with courtesy, not always agreeing, but not disparaging.

I'm not suggesting you go away, but please express your disagreement in a polite and respectful manner. This is not one of those screaming match talk shows so popular with the right wing. We are seriousy concerned about the state of the world, and treat this as a discussion forum on how to improve a deteriorating situation, not a place for insulting those with whom we disagree.

PDFee et al,

you need to see this documentary:

www.thecorporation.com

the thing you are missing is that individuals are irrelevant when we talk about corporations or capitalism. individual CEOs who do not deliver on the bottom line will be fired. period. it is irrelevant if they are the nicest person in the world. and that is the point. it is the logic of infinite growth which is destroying the planet...that logic has to be replaced with the landbase as central to sustainability.

Now I know why PDFee is so angry. You're a failue. You tried to take part in the "American Dream" but couldn't cut it. So now you cast the blame on the big bad government.
Strange, but I worked closely with a man who began in his garage (as so many others have) until he was able to make the next move and rent a building for manufacturing. His idea began with just he and his wive. When I joined in with him we were five people. Today, six years later, he employs almost 100 people.
I've been wondering for weeks now why you keep saying things like "What have you been smoking," or "I suggest some psychotropic drugs." You just an angry person, that's all.

Personal to Eurobelle ~

If you would like, please feel free to notify the website administrator and ask that my IP address be banned from this website. It's not like it hasn't happened before on other blogs, believe me!

The fact is, if you desire to deny my participation, to squelch my voice, and to draw mute my expressions and thoughts, which I assume is what your stated goal is ~ you do me justice. For you very eloquently make my point by showing your complete lack of desire to share and learn.

But if you are comfortable enough in your own beliefs to hear other voices and examine the spectrum of thought from the perspectives of others; then read on and think. I ask you not to believe, not to blindly absorb, but to think.

And I welcome your views too, which allows me to consider it and alter my own universal paradigm as I see fit. I've told you this before, but you don't seem to want to actually share anything. You just want me to go away. Nope. Not happening.

Bouncer? Hardly. Do you wish to do intellectual battle with my cognitive and experiential arsenal? I stand ready to defend my own views. Do you? I see no evidence so far that you have anything to offer. I've been watching your posts, and there's not much to go on.

Oh, and "hee, hee, hee" does not qualify as an actual response. You'll have to do better. People are reading this, and will not give you any points for that.

For those on the sidelines; Eurobelle here does not care for my discussion on any topics, and would rather I just vanish and take my thoughts with me.

To paraphrase a rather salty cinematic scoundrel, "I'm disinclined to acquiesce to her request."

That link takes too long to work, so try its basic form -
http://www.ewg.org

hybridoma,

Entropy, yes, I remember it now. I get it confused with entelechy. So, it seems we cannot reach fulfillment before things fall apart, so, throughout history, we have had to start all over again. That's what we're trying to do now, create a stable society out of the ecocidal chaos of big-time corporate capitalism, but without destroying free enterprise. But the chances are we will again have to start all over again because so much damage is being done to the biosphere including our collective bodies by the mega tons of pollution spreading around the World. Read this -
http://www.ewg.org/reports/bodyburden2/execsumm.php

PDFee. Did you stop to think that she was saying "as the climate heats up" in a figurative way, rather than referring to climate change? I can see the "climate heating up" already as fewer people have much more and many people have much less. This has always led to some type of revolt. That's why whenever someone brings up this topic they are shouted down as promoting class warfare.

communitarian. The word you are trying to remember is entropy, which is the second law of thermodynamics. But there are also self organizing systems, many of which can be observed in Nature, such as the formation of crystals, or flocks and swarms of animals which all move together as if they were one.
If you are interested in this field of science, or just curious, then just do a search for self forming systems. If you can put up with the technical language, it has some interesting things to say about societies.

PDF,
Go away.
I volunteer to be a bouncer.

PDFee. I wish I had the time this morning to quote some parts of the Federalist Papers regarding allowing private corporations to exist.
I do have time for one thing and that is your mean spirited attack on kathyodat regarding the military and controlling the public. Bush has already tried to free himself of the Posse Comitatus Act forbidding the use of the US military on domestic land. That job was relegated to the National Guard, most of who, by the way, happen to be in Iraq with their respective State's equipment. Private armies such as Blackwater are growing at an incredible rate. Why is this? We are paying a private corporation with our tax dollars to do the job of our National Guard and police, and we are paying them much more. How can you twist this one: the public's money going to pay a public corporation?
If you can't at least admit the possibility of these private armies as being Bush's way around the Posse Comitatus Act then I don't think you remember what happened in New Orleans.

The Wealth Cap has to be set high enough to preserve the profit motive but low enough to prevent extreme wealth/power concentration. I guesstimated one to ten million per person, but it only works if the WC is set by public referendum, not determined by a few corrupted representatives.

Direct democracy by public referendum is also the way to regulate corporations, banks, and other institutions of the plutocracy. Politicians and bureaucrats are too often corrupted and fail at regulating these powerful institutions. No one is immune to the bribes and threats of criminals who buy our representatives, but they can't buy us all.

Direct democracy has given the Swiss no wars in 150 years, no boom and bust economy, the best healthcare and education, no war on drugs and no drug problem, little crime, few immigration problems and the highest per capita income in the world. Modern information and communications can bring direct democracy to America and the eventually the world.

New ideas often produce funny rantings from conservatives and the Wealth Cap is a utopian idea they will react to. The WC requires direct democracy, but it's not associated with the Mike Gravel campaign to bring a form of direct democracy here. For MG's take on DD see: http://www.gravel2008.us/national_initiative

kivals,

I had a beautiful riposte almost complete, then this wretched forum timed me out. It has no edit button, so I am forced to be too brief to explain my viewpoint:

So, even progressives have their own business-as-usual policy ! Beyond that, hardly anyone comprehends what I am trying to get across.

I want to explain further what I mean by this rather testy comment, but this very limited forum doesn't give me the time to do so!

communitarian,

Striving for survival, health, and human welfare all involve striking the right balance. Most progressives have realized that corporate power has produced an economic/social/political system way out of balance and so we try to band together to fight and cripple corporate influence to the extent possible.

There are positive aspects, or at least not necessarily harmful aspects, of capitalist systems, but they seem to be most easily found in small family-run enterprises or in other sole proprietorships or small partnerships. The accumulation of private power that occurs in large corporations warps the political system, the culture, and the entire society, and it becomes increasingly obvious that it gravely threatens future human welfare.

To fight this menace, progressives must continue to build organizations and movements, more and more international movements, that can achieve the necessary momentum and force to break the inertia of the corporations trying to control the future of the planet.

PDFee,

You express the essential paradox of life on Earth when you ask how we could live without free enterprise even though the biosphere is severely damaged by its relentless growth and expansion. The dilemma extrapolates throughout human activity -

Most people are good, but too much of any good thing turns it bad.

Free enterprise is good, but too much of any good thing turns it bad.

Name anything that helps any situation and it will be driven to extremes by opportunist manipulators. That seems to be a human instinct.

I know exactly what is required for the human race to reform this global society and live in peace and balance with the Earth - but every time it is tried manipulators destroy it from within. What's that word that means everything tends to degenerate and fall apart? We're trapped in it, and that means we cannot create a stable society because life itself in innately unstable, so all existence is the process of paradox.

I've often asked myself, as I haul the recycling bin out to the curb, why the burden is on us to recycle the packaging that our food, products and indulgances come in. After all, I did not want the package, merely the product inside the package.

I fantasize about taking my recycling back to the stores and tell the managers, "Here, you can have this back. I'm done with it."

I realize that some grocery stores allow you to recycle their plastic bags. And to those grocery stores, I slute you.

Unfortunately, many of the products we purchase today, whether out of necessity or want, are harmful to life on this one, single planet.

I am leary of comapanies that are quick to jump on the "Look how green we are" bandwagon. GE's most recetn commercials would give the impression that they are all about keeping the environment safe, though we know better ... but how many people really know better?

As Paul Hawken says in "Ecology of Commerce," corporations need to be financially accountable for what they take out of the earth, and the pollution (waste) that they cannot put back into the natural world without harming it.

PDFee, re the free flow of commerce: "encourage it in a socially responsible way", the framers of our constitution defined strict guidelines for the corporations. State regulated charters with the power to dissolve corporations as needed. They did not have personhood rights, they helped themselves to that with the assistance of a Supreme Court clerk who was a former corporate hack.

We need to go back to regulating corporate behavior. Obviously, they are incapable of regulating their own behavior, since what they do is dictated by the bottom line, and nothing else. Public shaming won't work unless it affects the bottom line. If they produce a harmful product, or don't protect their workers, they calculate how much it will cost to pay off the victims and go with the bottom line. Responsibility and accountability must be applied to them, it will not be applied by them unless the bottom line kicks in.

If they can get away with hiding their profits to avoid paying taxes (as these lenient Republican administrations tolerate), the bottom line again aplies. If we don't enforce laws regulating their behavior (such as product safety and workplace safety), they will ignore the laws. Bottom line. That is why I call them sociopaths when they try to claim personhood. They have no right to that claim.

And the redistribution of wealth is creating a dangerous situation. Our military is being trained and equipped for urban warfare. Who do you think the next target will be as the climate heats up and the US middle class disappears. When people talk of revolting, how do you think the privileged will react? Gently? Like in Iraq?

We the consumers are the perrenial fountain of money for the corporations. Without us they would wither and die.

They are masters at manipulating, dominating and controling us through their advertising.

As consumers we must be as masterful as they are at resisting their enticements.

Comm ~

When's the last time a hand-to-mouth type actually generated a job for anybody, besides social workers that is? Did you ever consider that those "rich" folks might actually take some of that evil money and start a business, hire some folks, give them the opportunity to make a living?

Well, I've owned two businesses in my lifetime, and while I was never able to grow these businesses enough to actually employ anybody, it was not for lack of trying. In the face of OVERWHELMING gov't beaurocratic rules, reguations, and taxation ~ I was unable to hire a staff beyond myself. If not for the usury SSA structure, the staggering health care costs, and all of the other gov't imposed hurdles, I would have probably 15 or 20 folks making a living right now. Would that make ME one of those awful corporate taskmasters who are being enriched on the backs of these folks? In your world, you'd rather I not have the opportunity to employ anybody?

You folks have got to reevaluate your stance towards corporate America. They are not Satan, you know! The vast majority of publically-traded companies are good citizens, employ many folks, and keep the engine of our society running. Yes, I can hear the cries now, there ARE bad companies, there ARE excesses ~ but on balance, I'd rather live in a world where companies CAN thrive, CAN grow and have the mandate from their shareholders to be good corporate citizens.

To wish them harm or ill is a very self-defeating attitude. We are beholden to the free flow of commerce and we need to encourage it in a socially responsible way, not destroy it!

Think before you wish, you might get what you ask for. Then where would we be??

Joel S. Hirschhorn and PDFee,

What is the incentive to get very rich, to grow from millionaire to billionaire? Does it help a person to live to 150 and beyond? No, rich people die well within the 75 to 100 year average. So, the biggest advantage of wealth must be psychological. A rich man can manipulate events by paying people to do things he considers important, like expanding his financial empire. That makes him FEEL powerful, though his personal life could hardly be any more affluent. When you can buy anything you want, it soon loses its significance. Then, manipulating people and events becomes a more interesting game, not to "save the World" or whatever, but to FEEL powerful and therefore immune to symbols of impending death that surrounded everyone. That's what money does for us. It makes us feel good just to have it in our hands, the power of it makes us feel secure from hunger and anything we happen to be afraid of, like some burglar or rapist or whatever. The more dollars in our wallet or purse, the better we feel, the fewer dollars the more vulnerable. Money is life. No money is death. Yet, it's just paper and coins. So, it is a very great delusion we sell to each other. We would survive just as long and maybe longer by living together on a farm growing our food and building our houses, and without the complications of modern society we might be happier. But money is addictive and to various degrees we are all hooked on it, which is a tragedy, since the biosphere cannot survive an ever-growing money-fired economy and its ever-growing population. Lust for money is killing the Earth, yet we go on as though it can somehow save us. Thus, we are an insane species plunging obsessively toward self-extinction.

OK, regulating corporate behavior might be a reasonable thing; but who would you have regulate it? What body or entity would have jurisdiction over the enterprise? Should the UN have governance? Perhaps a group of NGO heads can specify when and how much a corporation can claim as profit and be taxed on. There would have to be a business model that would be sustainable and allow for reasonable growth. Who would say what is reasonable? You see, you get into a huge can of worms when you talk about regulating a free and open market.

If you honestly and truly think that our military is being geared up to attack the likes of you and me ~ I think you need to see a counselor and consider psychoactive drugs, OK? I'm not even going to touch that one. It's way out there with using reverse-enginieered alien technology for energy creation, or Keynesian economic theories.

As the climate heats up?

OK, what is your "baseline" for a "normal" climate? Can you give me what your normative sample is that we will consider as what is "normal" when it comes to climate? I'm not being a reactionary here, I'm just asking what do we collectively use as a "normal" climate?

As I look back over the recorded and theorized temperature gradient of our planet, I can't seem to spot a flatline in which we can call normal! Am I just not looking at it right? Is it really been static for all these centuries and I'm just so completely blinded by my rush to expand corporate greed that I can't see what "normal" is??

I'm sorry, but I think your argument for a climate-based revolution whereby our military takes us captive is specious at best, and frankly, just plain silly.

OK, now we're medieval...

What place are YOU going to take in this structure? Are you a peasant or are you the lord of the manor?

To Adam West ~

You seem all primed and ready to bring down the corporate structure that has typified this country for the last 150 years. What is it you plan to do with the millions of unemployed middle class? You have enough brown rice and soy milk to keep them fed?

Just curious....

Perhaps you could share with the assemblage your plans for what happens AFTER you've successfully and gleefully destroyed the corporations in America?

What's the next step?

Wealth cap? What kind of dope are you smoking?

Doesn't anyone involved in this discussion have any concept of incentive? Why do we produce? Why do we innovate? Why do we advance? We do so, at least in part, to better OUR OWN lot in life, that's why! Everything I read here is a envy-based exercise in whining and carping about how awful those "rich" people are. I cannot twist my brain around enough to make sense of that kind of mentality! Everyone with at least a modicum of lucid thought is also given the hope to improve themselves, and their families, so that they can hope to live comfortably, eat well, and enjoy some of the abundant life that America offers. It offers it, it does not guarantee it. If you work at educating yourself, making good choices, and actually taking steps to SAVE some money, INVEST in some high-quality stocks, you too can participate in that thriving economy that many here seem to detest so much.

To place "wealth caps" on people is to take away hope ~ and disincentivize achievement.

What total bull-butter. What would you have us do? Put all of society's assets into a big pile and distribute it equally? Is that what you are prescribing? Do you think "the poor" will do any better with it? Guess what bucko, you give economically ignorant people money and the ONLY thing they will do with it is fritter it away. I challenge anyone to prove otherwise. The only way to move forward is through education ~ and placing incentives in the marketplace for people to achieve, to innovate and to risk.

That's how a capitalist system works ~ should you like to participate in alternative systems, I'm sure France is still looking for a few good folks.

http://www.intransit-international.com/home_moving_paris_france.html

Economic Armageddon Is Coming

Joel S. Hirschhorn

Stop being a compliant consumer. Face the ugly truth. Don't get fooled by the stock market. Accept the need for the mistreated middle class to become the revolutionary class. The British military establishment's most prestigious think tank sees what too few over-consuming Americans are willing to anticipate. Unjustified and mounting economic inequality is planting the seeds for global economic conflict.

Here is what the new report from the UK Defense Ministry's Development, Concepts and Doctrine Centre warned might happen by 2035. "The middle classes could become a revolutionary class. The growing gap between themselves and a small number of highly visible super-rich individuals might fuel disillusion with meritocracy, while the growing urban under-classes are likely to pose an increasing threat...Faced by these twin challenges, the world's middle-classes might unite, using access to knowledge, resources and skills to shape transnational processes in their own class interest."

Consider the wisdom of economist John Maynard Keynes: The rich are tolerable only so long as their gains appear to bear some relation to roughly what they have contributed to society. Think of it as proportional and justified economic success. This can be tolerated by poor and middle class people if they believe the economic system is fair and properly rewards those who work harder or have better capabilities. But truly obscene economic rewards angers people. When most prosperity and wealth is unfairly channeled to relatively few Upper Class people, it is only a matter of time until fuming, resentful people in the Lower Class decide enough is enough and revolt. Perhaps violently, if the political system remains controlled by the Upper Class.

A ton of data demonstrate how crazy our economic system has become where a relatively few receive astronomical gains that no rational person could see as justified. One study tracked down home ownership data for 488 CEOs in the S&P 500 Index set of companies. The typical home of the CEOs has 12 rooms, sits on 5.37 acres, and carries a $3.1 million price-tag. Companies big enough to rate S&P 500 status hiked their median CEO pay by 23.78 percent in 2006 to $14.8 million. In comparison, U.S. worker weekly wages rose just 3.5 percent in 2006.

Despite what you hear about the sagging housing market and the many people facing foreclosure, business at the top end of the U.S. housing market is booming. Sales of homes in the $5 million-and-up price range rose 11 percent last year, reports the Dallas-based Institute for Luxury Home Marketing. Ten residential properties sold for over $28 million in 2006. The most expensive in New Jersey sold for $58 million; it went to Richard Kurtz, the CEO of Advanced Photonix, a telecom supplier. In the "ultra-luxury market" a set of suites in New York's fabled Plaza Hotel was converted last year into one-bedroom condos that start at $6.9 million.

From another study we learn that pay for American college presidents over the past decade has jumped seven times faster than pay for college faculty. In 1996, only one college president took home over $500,000. In 2006, 112 college presidents hit that mark. Meanwhile, after inflation, compensation for college professors increased just 5 percent since 1996. And college students have faced rapidly mounting tuition far higher than inflation rates.

CEOs are getting away with economic murder. Bob Nardelli, the CEO who departed Home Depot early this year, had an exit package worth $210 million. IBM CEO Sam Palmisano took home $18.8 million in 2006 and will receive $34.9 million in deferred pay and $33.1 million in retirement benefits when he leaves IBM. Even more extreme is the case of Occidental Petroleum CEO Ray Irani. The interest income alone on the $124 million that ended the year in Irani's deferred-pay account totaled $679,396. The Los Angeles Times estimated Irani's total payoff for 2006 at $460 million. Leslie Blodgett, the top exec at cosmetics giant Bare Escentuals, collected $118.9 million in 2006, with most of that coming from the $117.7 million she cleared cashing out stock options. She received 4 million additional stock options before 2006 ended.

Economists Emmanuel Saez of the University of California at Berkeley and Thomas Piketty of the Paris School of Economics found that the richest 10 percent of the U.S. population received 44 percent of the pretax income in 2005. This was the highest since the 1920s and 1930s (average: 44 percent) and much higher than from 1945 to 1980 (average: 32 percent). With more than 140 million U.S. workers, that top 10 percent equals 14 million workers. The bottom half of that top 10 percent had incomes of about $110,000. That may not seem all that high, except that the overwhelming majority of Americans can never expect such income. And remember that many of these top 10 percent Americans are married to or living with equally highly paid people.

When it comes to obscene economic inequality, however, you must focus on the huge gains received by the richest 1 percent - some 1.4 million people. Their share of pretax income has gradually climbed from 8 percent in 1980 to 17 percent in 2005. Their average income was $371,000. Who is in the top sliver of richness? Economists Steven Kaplan and Joshua Rauh of the University of Chicago estimate that there were about 18,000 lawyers, 15,000 corporate executives, 33,000 investment bankers (including hedge fund managers, venture capitalists and private-equity investors) and 2,000 athletes who made roughly $500,000 or more in 2004.

Do those at the top pay their fair share of taxes? Middle class Americans, after nearly 30 years of tax-cutting, are now paying about the same share of their incomes in federal taxes that they paid before Ronald Reagan entered politics. In contrast, America's richest have seen the share of their incomes that goes to federal taxes cut by over half. That's what happens in a failed democracy and the rich control the political system.

What the future holds for the victimized middle class will not only depend on the uncontrolled greed of the wealthy Upper Class and its control of the political system. It will also be linked to the coming tsunami of global warming impacts on climate, sea level, water supplies, crops and disease. There will be devastating impacts on hundreds of millions and perhaps billions of people worldwide. Lower Class people will be sacrificed – left to suffer the consequences. The rich will retreat to their walled, protected and well stocked havens.

Add to this scenario the inevitable collapse of the entire economic system. At some point it will not be controllable as it is now by those in banking and finance, able to manipulate it to sustain economic injustice. Eventually the inherent fundamental absurdities of the global economic system will prove unsustainable. The wealthy Upper Class will have siphoned off most of the world's wealth and hoarded resources to maintain a luxury lifestyle.

Gallup News Service recently reported on how the American public's views on the need for government to redistribute wealth by more heavily taxing the rich. In 1939, 35 percent agreed with that policy. In 1998, it was 45 percent. In 2007 it rose to 49 percent. On whether upper income people pay too little taxes, 66 percent this year agreed. Also, this year, people were asked: Do you feel that the distribution of money and wealth in this country today is fair, or do you feel that the money and wealth in this country should be more evenly distributed among a larger percentage of the people? Again, 66 percent agreed that a more even distribution is needed. Economic revolt in the USA will happen when Lower Class people stop believing in upward mobility, because they finally have first hand knowledge that joining the Upper Class is out of reach, no matter how hard they work or how much education they obtain.

What the future holds: Lower Class economic slaves fighting to survive in a medieval, ugly and bleak world that so many science fiction stories have portrayed. In that hell their best option will be to rise up and revolt against the rich and powerful Upper Class. With such a prospect, global class war on a sick planet, prevention is a priority. For us, that requires paying much more attention now to economic inequality, economic injustice, economic apartheid and the many attacks on the middle class. If not, we get Economic Armageddon along with environmental disaster.

[See www.delusionaldemocracy.com to learn about the author's new book.]

commonman3,

I understand the value of civilized discourse, but I also understand that fire must be met with fire. Tom Daschle, former Senate majority leader, tried to approach the corporate-run White House with civility and respect, and he was undermined at every turn and his career was demolished.

In some instances, gentle, civil, and polite approaches build bridges, but in others, particularly when the opponent feels confident and powerful, and has a predilection towards predatory behavior, they result in a perception of weakness and invite ridicule and scorn as well as an attempt at annihilation. I believe that progressives, with regard to the corporate elite of today, face the latter situation.

Don't get too worked up about coorporations. There is an easier and more far reaching solution. MEDIA REFORM. We are the bottom of the pyramid and if we pull out from the CNN/FOX game the top will tumble.
Yes, MEDIA REFORM will kill coorporations. Don't be duped. Grassroots and progressive, just like commondreams.org.
adamwestfakey@yahoo.ca

It is in people's collective hands to break, or at least to begin strangling, the cycle of excessive and expanding consumption upon which the corporate money machine is based. Not only that, but action saves money, too.

I forgot, "it is about corporate ACCOUNTABILITY, not corporate RESPONSIBILITY." Remember this key. We are the sovereign over our creations, not the other way around.

The global warming awareness rally near us had speakers on bike riding, vegetarianism, affects in other people's home countries, but not the single biggest factor at all: corporations, different from regular businesses. Don't let the ideology say they are the same "just business". No. History tells us different. The founders of the US hated, HATED corporations just AS MUCH as they hated the king. Corporations were tools for wealth extraction in the name of the king. Traditionally a tool of imperialism. Looks like we've come full circle. At the beginning of the US corporations were tightly controlled entities of the law. Today they still are legal institutions yet they dominate the US, the world, and are destroying our planet, and are out of OUR control. Read the real history. It's not any sort of "red" fantasy. It is real. "the life of a corporation is, indeed, less than that of the most humblest citizen." said the NY Supreme Court late last century. We need to rethink and reassert our democracy over the beasts we created and allow to exist and the privileges they construct. How about democracy at any work place that is granted incorporation as a condition for that incorportion? The future and planet belongs to all of us. Not a relative few.
read poclad dot org for more on this part of our history. corporate scum, here we come.

We will not win converts with the strategy that labels those we must convince "corporate bastards".

Companies will do 'the right thing' if a) there is profit in it, or b) if they are shamed into it through bad publicity, or c) if they are required to do it by government.

This movement needs someone or some organization which can either a) convince the company that it is in their profit interest to 'do the right thing', or b) study the ways the companies negatively impact our environment and publish those results in such a way that the public is moved to voice its discontent.

The third course requires collective action supporting a political candidate who can push through the required legislation.

Each option possesses merit. None of them guarantee success.

There is a very real possibility we will fail here, that the earth will blacken and die. But what a loss. If people can see the reality of the threat, there is a chance people will be motivated to act collectively to preserve what is left.

Name calling and simply accusing in general terms brings the battle to a level which brings shame to us all. We've got to do this thing intelligently, or not at all.

Just imagine if Nader had been president of the US for the last 7 years. The first thing he probably would have done is Clean House.

The WC is the best idea I've heard this week. I would vote for it. But I have a haunting feeling that something in human nature would keep it from working as well as it does in theory.

Here is a simple answer to most, if not all of our social, economic and ecological problems. It is based on controlling the pernicious tendency of money-power to accumulate steadily in less people, causing overpopulation, resource depletion and eventual ecosystem collapse. It is The Wealth Cap:

The Wealth Cap is yearly direct democratically established cap on wealth/power of around one to ten million per capita, including assets.

Wealth cap excesses can be given away but to individuals only, not organizations of any kind, and counted in their individual cap limit.

If not given away, WC excesses will be electronically deleted by a cancelbot in the banking system. This can cause deflation of currency and increase buying power.

The wealth cap can be made inversely proportional to population growth. The lower the birthrate, the higher the cap and vis. It gives people a money incentive to have smaller families.

This will work under all types of governments to democratically end the ravages of unnatural extremes of wealth concentration and power centralization.

Under a WC, former oligarchs can continue to live in style by renting luxuries. Money and power would no longer be their reason for living. By giving away millions to many individuals, they become great and admired public benefactors, freed from the squadrons of lawyers, accountants and other distractions, and from the management and responsibilities that come with concentrating wealth and power. They would be able to walk among the public without fear.

The world's poor would soon become middle class and much of the middle class would become millionaires. This semi-voluntary wealth/power redistribution can be achieved peacefully by public referendum.

We can dream, can't we?

genaman,

How will there be a Happy Earth Day when humans are gone? The earth is a rock and could not care less what we do. Almost all the other life on earth does not have enough awareness to be concerned with what we do, and much of it benefits by our actions (rats and roaches and certain microorganisms, for example) just as much of it suffers. Is it okay for rats and roaches to benefit at the expense of others? How can you answer that without a human-centered viewpoint and how can you justify a human-centered viewpoint with your non-human-centered perspective?

I wouldn't worry so much about the non-human universe and instead would concentrate on what the corporate bastards are doing to the human family. We evolved our feelings and motivations with regard to perceived wrongs as part of a survival strategy that worked to maximize the welfare of the human groups we lived in, and so it seems likely we can experience those feelings and motivations in their most robust form if we concentrate on human welfare.

North American Corporate Reparations Fund

The fund will pay back every individual citizen for the environmental damage done to the North American continent. All individual taxes will be paid for families up to 22% above the median income for the next 30 year from income taxes raised solely from corporations; all heath care costs shall be paid from a corporate shareholders' tax equal to the needs of every family regardless of income for the next fifty years. A wealth tax that makes sure that every worker who works 40 hours per week will have at least a middle class income.

The pay back is really just adjusting the tax system that has overtaxed the working class for the last fifty years and under taxed capital. Fairness to workers must be regained. Aren't we just a bit tired of the busboy paying for the businessman's lunch?

I hate to brake it to the people but those corporations live and exist because of us. We can go all the way back to returnable glass soda bottles. It was us that let them become plastic. The soda makers excuse? "lastic will help us keep the cost of soda down" I want my nickel coke back? Oh and let us not rorget that we the consumer soda buyers got to contribute zillions of those plastic bottles to landfills and even bottoms of oceans Etc.
Look corporations are NOTHING WITHOUT US TO BUY FROM THEM. If we got together we could make them dance to our Environmental Tune.
FAT CHANCE! The best a few of us can do is post some ditty in places like this while drinking a Diet coke in a plastic bottle as we are writing it.
Happy Earth Day.
A Happy Earth Day will happen when the last human disappears from this Earth

In some European countries, Sweden in particular, taxing pollution has dramatically brought down carbon emission levels. We really need to start pushing for that here. Pollution taxes are far more equitable than income, property or sales taxes.

And agitkid, I wouldn't call corporate behavior psychotic, I would call it sociopathic. Psychotic is divorced from reality, sociopathic is without conscience. People aren't allowed to act without conscience in our society (except for George who places himself above the law), but the corporations act with impunity because they claim all the advantages of personhood, but none of the responsibilities.

We speak of men who do not love their children more than they love money.

post-postmodern

I cannot agree that corporate leaders have accounted for the total collapse of the eco-system and the resulting effects on their own, or their children's, quality of life, and have taken measures to prevent it. I think they cannot stop themselves from continuing on the same destructive path for a variety of reasons:
(1) if they do not go full speed ahead in production, they are afraid that their equally rapacious friends and competitors will pass them up;
(2) they have benefited their whole lives from externalizing costs, making others pick up the tab, acting as "free riders," and they are hooked on it and cannot help but believe others will sacrifice to solve the problems they created;
(3) they think only "losers" worry about the future of the human race and the earth and they would be kicked out of their country clubs for showing such concern; and
(4) they are hooked on greed and cannot get off of it.

They are like greed addicts and they need intervention. We need to tax and regulate the living daylights out of them for their own good. Maybe even outlaw the large public corporation? I think so, for them. It is win-win.

aaa,

You need not worry about your corporation stocks. When the ecology collapses the economy will collapse and they will all be worthless; or the economy may collapse first, same result either way.

Kurzweil ignores a fundamental problem, and he and his approach should be feared more than the worst of the corporate robber barons.

A serious challenge in human societal development is maintaining stability, particularly as human technology empowers humans to create never-before-imagined harm to other humans and to our shared environment. A world populated by ever-changing and evolving, at accelerating speeds, man-machine hybrid monsters will make the worst possible climatic disasters seem like a day in the park. Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely, and with some hybrid monster achieving great power, with weaker bonds with the human race than any pure human monster of the past, there is no limit on the horrors that could be inflicted.

Philosophers long ago recognized the importance of balance in most if not all things, and if ever there were a time for applying a sense of balance to the extent to which technology is modifying our lives, and putting on the brakes, the dawn of the creation of man-machine monsters is it, as Bill Joy, formerly of Sun Microsystems, has repeatedly warned.

It will be the only thing that concerns your children and grandchildren, if they're lucky enough to survive another 30 years. Jargon like "post-singularity" doesn't alter their prospect for a future.

Most Americans are not corporate stockholders. The most valuable holdings of the average citizen are those held in common with all citizens: the public lands, air and water. Stockholders have exhibited poor stewardship of their own assets and the public assets we all share. Stockholders are destroying our children's future for profit. We will have to confiscate their holdings if we ever expect to survive as a species.

You have all underestimated the greed of capitalists. It is not merely short-term greed. The total collapse of the global ecosystem is not in the interest of corporations, and they will account for this. The question is not whether human civilization will survive- it will- but at what cost. There may be no more cloud forests or polar bears or any wild place left anywhere without the stain of humankind upon it.

aaaa,

get ready to face industrial collapse, or have nothing to eat at all....

aaaa,

you must be smoking whatever Kurzweil is smoking. individuals are not, by definition corporations, although lawyers and judges decided in the late 19th century to give corporations status as an individual, which is what exempts CEOs etc from accountability.

Kurzweil is on the Army Science Advisory Board, not someone who i trust for that fact alone, or does he have any real analysis of ecology and/or industrial capitalism, it's history and affects on the land and indigenous cultures. This is a guy who wants to extend his life using nanobots. It's total nonsense.

ps. for those who think that the corporation is some benign entity, you should see the documentary The Corporation:

http://www.thecorporation.com/

by definition, corporations and corporatism are psychotic in their disregard for the welfare of any plant or animal species (including humans). they are defined only by economic returns. anything else is irrelevant.

No where in the article or in the comments did i find the word "capitalism". Lets call it what it is, a rapacious system built on a presumption of infinite growth in a finite world. It will destroy the planet. And ultimately the system is based on violence and resource extraction.

I strongly encourage readers to read Derrick Jensen's new book, Endgame: The Problem of Civilization. Power is a central issue that needs to be addressed in this conversation. Derrick does a good job at be honest about power, capitalism and violence (violence as a basis for capitalism and the states insatiable appetite for resource extraction).

Shouldn't the headline read "Corporate Unaccountability is this Earth Day's Inconvenient Truth"? Corporate accountability is an oxymoron, unless one means accountable to the bottom line.

In virtually every sphere -- whether it be climate change, energy policy, genetically modified organisms, industrial agriculture, or military violence -- corporations are in opposition to the future viability of our planet and our species.

Corporations will use "green" adveretising but the hollow image is just that. The laws of the market will not allow the changes necessarry. We have to move beyond corporatism to community.

The institutions seem to feel that if they make stylish "ecoporn" commerical telling everyone about how green all their activities are, that covers it.

Pacific Gas and Electric puts out commercials about getting 30% of their power from "sun, water, wind" . . . well, of that, most comes from water, from the Hetch Hetchy system which has been generating power for decades. The percentage that comes from "sun" and "wind" is negligible. But if they SAY so, that's all it takes.

People such as yourself, Mr. Wasserman, who are attempting to educate the populace have your work cut out for you. Skilled communicators are definitely needed to counteract the slick b.s. People want to be hopeful so there is a motivation to believe the commercials. Most people do not believe that institutions could put commercials on television that blatantly lie. They think there's some law against it.

Carry on.

We can always count on corporations to expend more on advertising that they have done something for the environment than they expend on actually doing something for the environment. Of course if they find it to be economically more rewarding to "go green," then corporations will do that, but rarely will that be the case, unless they are made to pay a penalty for doing otherwise.

hear hear!

Corporations are chartered under our laws and at one point, a Supreme Court case inadvertently gave them the rights of a "person"---which they clearly aren't. There should be legislation that takes this "personhood" away.

If we are to have any hope of containing the environmental disaster around us today, it is through new restrictions in corporate power.

This is, of course, problematic since they pay off all of our political leaders through campaign contributions.

So, we get to the issue of "clean money" that is being fought in many states and which California, in its most recent state election, unfortunately voted down.

If you have not yet read "Screwed" by Thom Hartmann, I would strongly recommend it (he was referred to in the main article).

Corporate accountability won't cut it anymore. From here on, confiscation with due process must be the prescription.

Corporations depend on a growing population to feed their growing economy, without which they cannot make the millions and billions they need to keep on as a rich and powerful class of global entrepreneurs. So, if women are given the right to decide if and when to birth how many or few children, the human population will stop growing and shrink, then no more masses of low-wage labor will be available to all those wanna-be billionaire businessmen. Thus, family planning clinics in every nation is the key to stopping the corporate rape of the Earth and the tons of ecocidal smoke, trash and sewage - and fewer people will create a labor shortage and the bargaining power to raise wages.

This is why Ralph Nader deserves all our support.

My goal is to reach children... which is also a huge task given the FACT that much advertising already preys upon them. Dr. Seuss wrote many books which carry deep, almost shamanic messages. My favorite, THE LORAX should be required reading for all youngsters to arm them against what Seuss called the (manufactured) THNEEDS. Although his character, THE ONCLER, is committed to business, and will not stop even when the forests are salvaged, the water turned black, the birds migrating to elsewhere... but he leaves behind the (Truffala) seeds, which is his admission that PROFIT alone is not the way to go, cannot sustain a planet. These wealthy tycoons amassing such obscene wealth are they today's King Tut's who think they can take it with them? Or do they wish to bequeath it to their children and grandchildren. If so, that IS our common ground... we all WANT a world sustained for the living. MONEY cannot buy water when there is drought, it cannot remove (by itself) toxic chemicals from our soil. I read long ago the adage, "Man is the only beast that fouls his own nest." Something to think about. Meanwhile, I, too am riding my bike, using only recycled items, and have been vegetarian for some time. Wasserman is right... our personal activities pale in comparison with the ravaging tentacles of corporations who lust after greed... but then, again, there are THE children.

Another inconvenient truth we'll have to face sooner or later is the ruling economic model is absurd....it does'nt work and for obvious reasons. This is paradigm which envisions no maximum wage nor amount of the finite earth an individual or group can aggregate...which allows an extremely priviledged sector-bankers to issue the common currency as debts to everyone including governments....indebting the whole world to them for the use of a immaterial measure....

What kind of exchange economy could work?
What kind of conception of property would this entail?
What kind of conception of money and monetary system would work?
If were to survive we'll need to reinvent ourselves and our medieval economic system......we can do this.